Emily again: Love reckons by itself — alone

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know about my annual affair with UPenn’s Modern and Contemporary American Poetry course (“ModPo”) taught by the great Al Filreis. I’m on my sixth year.  This is no impersonal MOOC, though I share the course with some 30,000+ students, most of whom will return every year to re-engage with old and new poems, as the course is constantly changing, growing, and offering new ways to interact with both classic and very recent poetry and poets. The course runs for 10 weeks but remains open throughout the year with discussion groups, ongoing interpretations, regular ongoing meet ups and crowdsourced close readings, teacher and student resources and constantly good conversation.  The course always begins with Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, effectively the mother and father of modernism - both representing separate stylistic poles that link and underpin all of the work that follows.  Nothing is mandatory, but I like to do the essays each year, especially as they’re always a little different.  And if you search the blog, you’ll see that I’ve posted each essay up here.  This week’s is a brief 500 word analysis of Emily Dickinson’s "Love reckons by itself--alone”.  Feel free to chime in with your own comments if you’re taken, or just read and enjoy the poem.  Poetry talk is always welcome.  

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Love reckons by itself — alone —

"As large as I" — relate the Sun

To One who never felt it blaze —

Itself is all the like it has —

As with many of Emily Dickinson’s poems, “Love reckons by itself – alone”, begins with an almost puritanical constriction, appearing to spiral inward and tighten, but with each reading the work becomes more expansive, inflationary, even explosive and sensual.  Even by Dickinson’s standards, this is a short poem of a single stanza, and appears, as her poems often do, to be a simple explication about the nature of Love’s grandeur and self-containment.  The closer you look, the less simple the poem becomes, each word informed and changed by the structural context, the Dickinsonian punctuation, the unusual rhythm where tradition and atonality work side-by-side, and the multiple meaning of each word.

The poem begins with one of poetry’s most overused words, and Dickinson throws it straight out there - charging and distorting the word Love through personification, slant rhyme, and odd conjunctions undermining a saccharine sense of romantic love.  Dickinson’s Love with a capital L could be God, or the equal of God in sensuality, or could be the human imagination or Poetry, or our ability to empathise and move beyond our individual selves. Following the word with the verb ‘reckons” turns Love from an abstract idea into a self-referential character, recursive – turning back onto itself as in resolving, self-contained and entire.  Dickinson uses the dashes to set the word “alone” off, making the quality of this self-containment visual.  Then she gives Love a voice, putting the next line in quotations and allowing Love to talk about how large it is, relating the heat of Love to the heat of the Sun, and how that blaze is both the perpetuator of life, and unknowable. Because it’s unknowable, we can only imagine it, even if we think we’ve experienced it, thereby undermining experience. 

There are particular rhythms and rhymes in this poem.  One of the more obvious is the equation of all the capitalised nouns: Love, Sun, One – each of these things not only rhyming but moving forward and backwards on the page to create a rhythm of motion and inevitability.  There is a heavy use of alliteration, particularly the L sound which creates a somewhat languid but progressive rhythm from Love to itself, alone, large, relate, blaze, all, and like.  The dashes not only set off the word “alone”, but then create a series of gaps or pauses which invite the reader to reflect for a brief moment, in those connective spaces.  The ending on the last space leaves the poem open ended, on a sentence which is cryptic enough to allow for multiple interpretation, multiple reading.  Free otherwise of punctuation, the poem is presented as iambic tetrameter, which is subverted by the dashes at the end of the first, third and forth lines.  The second line could be enjambment with the following line (relating the sun to one), or more likely the lack of a dash functions as a full stop/period, as evidenced by the capitalisation of the word “To” next to One.  This allows the third line to mirror poems like “Volcanoes be in Sicily”: a celebration of imagination rather than a celebration of experience.  We don’t need to experience to know what Love feels like (in fact, we can’t get at this through the visceral).  Instead we have all the correspondence (the ‘reckoning’) we need in our imagination. 

Poetry Monday: World Poetry Day + Eileen Myles Live

Happy world poetry day.  The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) made the decision to proclaim today as World Poetry during UNESCO’s 30th session held in Paris in 1999.  One of the main objectives of the Day is to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities.

Photo by Catherine Opie

From UNESCO’s website: "Poetry reaffirms our common humanity by revealing to us that individuals, everywhere in the world, share the same questions and feelings.”  I couldn’t agree more.  So why not take the opportunity to celebrate?  The Academy of American Poets has put together a list of links to poetry organisations and festivals around the world, that you can explore - each has lots of resources.  You could take one of your poems and trade it for a cup of coffee or tea courtesy of Julius Meinl coffee: http://www.meinlcoffee.com/paywithapoem.  You could spend far too long perusing the many quotes, images and events on Twitter.  You could drop by UNESCO’s page which has lots of background material and some featured poets.  You could buy someone (yourself, perhaps) a book of poetry from a local bookstore (or order one up from the library - bonus points if it’s a poet who lives in your city).  You could read one of your favourite poems, aloud, to the delight of all your family (mine certainly enjoys it when I do that, not, but it generally doesn’t stop me :-).  Or, you could enjoy two "Writers House Fellows" events featuring none other than Eileen Myles.  These will be streamed live through KWH-TV at http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/multimedia/tv/.  The first is on the 21st of March (probably today for most of you) at 6:30 PM US eastern time (9:30 AM AU EST if you happen to be on my timezone) and will feature Eileen reading her work.  The second is an interview/conversation on Tuesday, March 22, starting at 10:30 AM US eastern time. Apparently you’re invited!

Poetry Monday: Anna Kerdijk Nicholson’s Everyday Epic

I’ve always thought that legal language and poetry were somewhat inimical to one another. Legal language is all about exactness, authority, and the weight of historical context. There’s no place for imagery, co-existance of multiple meanings, and vagaries.  Instead legal language tends towards the use of precise technical terms with Latin roots, phrasal verbs, and pronominal adverbs, none of which tend to work so well in poetry. Anna Kerdijk Nicholson is a rare blend of lawyer and poet, making full use of her awareness of language and it’s real-life importance, but allowing the full multiplicity of poetry’s linguistic and demilitarisation qualities to shine in her poetic work.  Kerdijk Nicholason makes full use of her linguistic skills in her new book Everyday Epic, exploring globally relevant current affairs and domestic scenes with the subtlety and complexity of a poet’s awareness of the difficulty of communication and the need for multiplicity in meanings.  Everyday Epic explores both the grand events of history such as the not-so-everyday epic of Burke & Wills, immigration, current affairs, but also a number of poems that explore cross-media including ekphrasis, love, grief, the beauty and occasional terror of the domestic front, and perhaps above all, the nature of language - its limits, its potential, its rhythms, and the way we can create new spaces through it.  For example,

this little taster from the poem "Although,”:

I step on the interstices
and sing in your hollows
you resound on me
and refract
I’m in discourse
although alone

I’ve yet to fully and deeply explore this collection in the way I like to with poetry: reading and re-reading, allowing time for the work to come around with me, and permeate the way I perceive things.  I’m doing that now, and enjoying it very much.  More soon.

Poetry Monday: A liquor never brewed

Those of you who have followed this blog for a while (or who know me) know that I’m a massive fan of the annual event known as Modern and Contemporary American Poetry or ModPo run out of Coursera by the University of Pennsylvania.  The event masquerades as a course, run for 10 weeks by the amazing Al Filreis and his exceptional team of Teaching Assistants and Community Teaching Assistants. You can certainly attend, get your certificate of attainment (or just follow along), and go on your merry way at the end of it (with a totally new approach to reading and appreciating poetry that extends way beyond the syllabus) - that’s enough of course.

For me and many others, once is just not enough.  The course has become an annual excuse to revisit some of the most seminal poets of all time, to do close, but not too close, readings of some exceptional and challenging poetic work.  Al has encouraged former students to come back and keep playing every year, through new material, through mentorship opportunities, new live ‘meet-ups’, new opportunities for interaction, and new approaches.  Though the numbers get larger each year, the intimacy somehow seems to grow too.  This year, there’s a new section for those who either want something a little different or who want to go further and deeper into the work.  It’s called ModPo Plus and it features complementary poetry and its own discussion forum.  Since I’ve done ModPo before, I’m working through all of the normal ModPo material and all the poems in ModPo Plus but focusing most of my discussions around the ModPo Plus material at the ModPo Plus forums.  Most of my essays will have the same topic as they have in previous years, but I’m enjoying revisiting the work and coming to it with beginner’s mind - maybe going just a bit further as I explore my assignment topics.  I thought it might be fun to post those essays up here.  Please feel free to put your own thoughts or essays into the comments.  I like the idea of these discussions spreading outwards and repeat ModPoers are encouraged to facilitate that.  Oh, and if you want to join ModPo it actually isn’t too late.  You can’t get a certificate as the first assignment date is passed, but you can jump right in at Gertrude Stein and join in now.  The community is very warm and inclusive and nothing is mandatory.

Here’s the little essay I wrote on Emily Dickinson’s “I taste a liquor never brewed”.  The full poem can be found here: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/i-taste-liquor-never-brewed-214

Of all Emily Dickinson’s poetry, “I taste a liquor never brewed” is one of the most exuberant, piling image upon image in an extended metaphor.  This poem is somewhat less condensed than much of her other work, freed from constraints by the drunken slur of dash and the repetition of exclamation mark. The quatrains use a ballad form but only rhyme the second and last word of each stanza, and the initial rhyme (“Pearl” and “Alcohol”) is off, which adds to the slightly arrhythmic, wild feel as it flows from first taste to the full satiation of inebriation.

In the first stanza we we’re introduced to what the poet is drinking: a rarified drop, stronger than any produced in the famous Rhine wineries. This ‘drink’ is delivered from “Tankards scooped in pearl”, which is more evocative than specifically semantic, but suggests something like a large shell (mother-of-pearl lined), or perhaps a cloud formation with the sun shining behind.  This intoxication comes from the exquisite beauty of the natural world (eco-poetics at its best).

There’s a sense in the second stanza, through rhythm, image, and punctuation, of a little subversiveness.  The poet has become debauched and drunk, though not on brewed liquor, but on air, on dew, and on the blue sky of summer.  Each dash functions as a pause or even a hiccup, coupled with extensive alliteration to create the rhythms of drunkenness that invite the reader to also partake.  The multi-sensual impact of a blue sunlit sky captured with such precision in “Molten Blue”, provides both warmth and visual appeal, but it’s more than the flower, the sights and scents of a striking summer day. It’s the impact of that day on the poetic imagination that turns it from a moment of experience to something permanent. This is the creative flow or wellspring that the poet taps into (to keep the liquid metaphor going).  It is Emily’s meta-poetic implication that turns this otherwise heady pastoral poem into something quite post-modern.

The extended metaphor of a drunkard at the inn is stretched further in the third stanza, as day becomes night and the poet continues the creative spree.  The landlord might be the foxglove itself, closing petals so that the bee and butterfly, that have had their fill of sweet nectar, can drink no more.  For the poet, the “high on life” inebriation doesn’t end because there’s always more beauty in the endless creative flow in this figurative inn where the tap is always open.

The final stanza shifts from the nature metaphor into a more frigid heavenly one, away from the immediacy of sensual pleasure.  From these lofty heights, beyond the window, an angel (“Seraphs”) or teetotaler saint might look down from a frosty (“snowy Hats”) heaven and disapprove of such excesses of sensual joy. The reader too, who has been encouraged in the first three stanzas to partake, might disapprove of such poetic licentiousness. After all, this is the full sensual experience – sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are all evoked in a reeling swirl that is quite overwhelming.  Of course, we might just join in in this moment of creative power and shared delight and let ourselves be seduced.

Poetry Monday: The Poetry Magazine Podcast

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a bit of a podcast fan.  They’re easy to slot into the day, listening while you cook, clean, iron, drive or do other chores that engage your body.  Some of my favourites which I try not to miss and have blogged about before are Regime Books’ Australian Poetry Podcast and Jacket2’s PoemTalk, but today I’ve enjoyed The Poetry Magazine’s podcast run by the Poetry Foundation.

This one includes an analysis of several the poems in the September issue, which focuses on Irish poets.  The podcast looks at three of the poems in the magazine - specifically Michelle O’Sullivan’s “Bespoke", Billy Ramsell’s “Things No Longer There", and Victoria Kennefick’s “Paris Syndrome".  There’s also an interview with Patrick Cotter, who guest-edited the edition and wrote the introduction.  Though The Poetry Foundation don’t go into the kind of depth that APP or PoemTalk do, listening is still a good way to find new poets, explore a few poems in a little more depth than a solitary reading, and always fun, I think, to hear poets read their own work, and to listen to poetry being explored and unpicked a little. You can also pick up copies of each of the poems discussed at the website, which is here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/5338

If you haven’t come across the Poetry Foundation before, I recommend it.  I think that their database of poets and poems (particularly American poets and poetry) is probably the most extensive on the internet - certainly the most extensive and valuable that I’ve come across.

Poetry Monday: Poetry at the Lake Mac Pub

Last month was the inaugural Poetry In The Lake Mac Pub, and I was delighted at how big a crowd this first session drew. The pub was packed.  It wasn’t just poets either, though there were plenty of poets reading their work, including the wonderful Jean Kent, who read to us from her new book The Hour of the Silvered Mullet. People also came just to listen, to read the works of their ancestors, and to recite their favourite classics: one fellow did a reading of “Ozymandias" that Kenneth Branagh would be envious of, and another recited “Jabberwocky” perfectly, entirely from memory. Kudos to poet Linda Ireland - pictured on the left - who organised and beautifully MCd the session.  Poetry in the Lake Mac Pub is a monthly event, running on the second Sunday afternoon of each month from 3.00 pm to 5.00 pm.  The next one is this coming Sunday, the 12th of July. Come along and participate in open mic readings of your work or another's. Or simply come to listen and enjoy the relaxed and convivial atmosphere (food, drinks and coffee/tea all available from the Bistro). This is a free community event, which takes place in the Lake Mac Tavern in the main street of Morisset (opposite the station).  Hope to see you there!